ABSTRACT
My research career took a strange turn over the past decade. What was supposed to be a concise and contained book project based on public opinion data from the 2000 presidential elections turned into a decade long project that evolved to include eight separate public opinion studies between 2000 and 2010, three separate book projects, and a research paper to be submitted to a journal. There were major missteps along the way, and far too much time between publication of Black Visions (University of Chicago Press 2001) and the first of the three books (Not in Our Lifetimes, University of Chicago Press 2011). There were side projects that diverted time from the main project. All in all, I was involved in a research process that any tenured colleague, including most definitely myself, would stridently tell our junior colleagues to avoid if they wanted to see their careers progress—and we would be absolutely right to give them that advice.
